[FS s.e.t.i.]

It’s been a long time coming, 2 years or more. I approached TwentySeven quite some time ago about possibly working on an Anti-Cheat solution for UrbanTerror. He gave me some great ideas and told me where to look, and the project began. I never really understood just how big of an undertaking this would be. I quickly came up with a C# .NET program that could pick out some of the common hacks such as mombot and monkey hook. It wasn’t too much longer that somebody pointed out just how easy it is to rebuild your source code from a compiled C# executable. That was pretty distressing so the project was shelved for a bit.

I finally reached my limit in public servers as hacks became more and more evident, and more and more people seemed to be installing them because of the little police work server admins really do. The United Admins Alliance made some strides in the right direction. So many hours get put in to review submitted demos. They make a serious effort and manage a large list of banned IPs, but the amount of work that goes into this is astounding. I set out to port the C# program I had written to C/C++. I was able to port the utility but I was concerned of just how little control I would have over the executable. At this time my anticheat was an external program to ioUrt. Another problem that arose was that there was no guid tracking system. People can change their guid’s at will, and obtaining a new IP address to get around an IP ban is fairly trivial as well. I had a working anticheat but what was the use in releasing something when you could hide or even take on known identities to avoid responsibility for your actions?

In comes Passport. I was pretty excited when I heard about this project being developed almost completely by SG_Kalish and |HSO|Raider.  I started talking to them a bit, and I really had ZERO clue as to how big this project really is. I was pretty unavailable for most of the winter of 2008 working hard, and trying to keep up with my and trying to keep up with my STA duties at the same time. This proved extremely difficult, as most of you know. All said and done, I became very active in the project this April/May… I’ve had little sleep since. Ask around . I had a good head start as my code wasn't too far behind. I found myself enjoying the coding more and more and now I simply can't put it down . It's really fun to work across international boundaries.

It’s hard to not be able to share how this works but for obvious reasons I simply can’t. I use a special test environment to verify that the anti-cheat code works. Before I ported everything to the latest ioUrbanTerror branch of ioQuake3 I did all my testing in 4.1 where all the hacks are currently. I was able to pick up all the OGC variants: monkey hook, mombot, urth, h3h3 urt, Urt Bot 4.1, to name a few. These all build on noskill’s original OGC work.

We are nearing the final stage of integration and development of the anti-cheat. The detection routines are complete. Kalish and I are now working very closely to “secure” our investment to be able to protect our work and provide you, the gaming public, with a high quality solution that you will be able to trust.

As I said it’s been a long time coming. Big thanks go out to Frozen Sand for recognizing our Passport project as playing a vital role for a successful release of 4.2. I'll post some followups here soon to keep you informed of our progress.

[Mearlin]

Almost time to play again then. Quakelive sucked me in as I suspected it would but I do miss UrT. Thanks for working so hard on such a needed aspect of this game.

[Opium]

Yaaaay!

[Mod. CM| illogical]

That's really great.  I've been experiencing an unlikely number of instant headshots right as I round a corner.  It's just a bit frustrating.

On a different note, if you all need somewhere to host this stuff, I have colocation space available, and a few spare servers kicking about.

[Rambetter]

So... You're modifying the ioquake3 GPL source code, and you're going to distribute a compiled binary of your work minus the source code?  The source code will be kept private?  Are you sure this is proper/legal?

I would hesitate a little bit to run an ioUrbanTerror where the source code was not available.  Also keep in mind that some of us run our servers on FreeBSD, and we'd like to compile the source code on that platform too (instead of running in Linux emulation mode).

Will this anticheat be an integral part of 4.2?

I await your answers.

[Mod. CM| illogical]

If you build the anti-cheat and Passport code as a library, you only have to release the code to load the library.  A quick MD5 of the library can confirm it's the right one.  (Yes, there are ways around that, but I'm not here to give people ideas).  For that matter, no executable is safe from decompilation, even encrypted ones.

[{C9}Wolverine (old)]

Although I have left eVo I am sure they would be willing to host as well.

[Darkknight]

so its sort of like a serial code, that only detects the code and does not ip ban, thus stopping the ip ban avoidance?

[FS s.e.t.i.]

Quote

So... You're modifying the ioquake3 GPL source code, and you're going to distribute a compiled binary of your work minus the source code?  The source code will be kept private?  Are you sure this is proper/legal?

I would hesitate a little bit to run an ioUrbanTerror where the source code was not available.  Also keep in mind that some of us run our servers on FreeBSD, and we'd like to compile the source code on that platform too (instead of running in Linux emulation mode).

Will this anticheat be an integral part of 4.2?

I await your answers.

good questions. we are modifying ioquake3 GPL code, this will be freely available for download PER GPL licensing. as illogical states, i am loading a library, similar to punkbuster in the respect that they only had to modify quake3 source to load their library. thus, i will never have to release my source code for the actual detection library.

we are very aware of all the different operating systems that are running ioUrbanterror. i can arrange to have this ported to FreeBSD.

the anticheat is a part of the UrT Passport Project and the ioUrbanTerror source code. it is not an integral part of UrbanTerror 4.2 qvm code.

[FS s.e.t.i.]

Quote

so its sort of like a serial code, that only detects the code and does not ip ban, thus stopping the ip ban avoidance?

Please clarify your question. Passport provides the means to enforce bans.

[/eVo/Quahog (old)]

This is the most important feature I look forward to in the upcomigrelease! Thank You   

[QA [T] BludShoT]

I like anti-cheats, and I'd love a good guid, but how can the guid portion of the passport really be effective?

[Darkknight]

Quote

Please clarify your question. Passport provides the means to enforce bans.

i was trying to say like, when you install some programs on your computer it makes you type a serial code to install it, think of it this way, like if someone gets banned from xbox live the people don't ban your ip they ban your xbox. you get what i mean?

[Serial]

Quote

I was able to pick up all the OGC variants: monkey hook, mombot, urth, h3h3 urt, Urt Bot 4.1, to name a few. These all build on noskill’s original OGC work.

Thanks for publishing the name of all the hacks available for UrT. Now every newbie can google them and use them till the anticheat will be released .. 

[FS RaideR]

a) with the help of google all mensioned hacked are avalible to all, we released names so that people know the kind of stuff that will no longer be certain to work with Urban Terror. We don't want to ban people if we can avoid it. We see this going one of two ways, people will either choose to hack and download them anyway or people will realise its not worth the UrT Wide bans and stop in time before the anti-cheat busts them.

b) We have a notoriety system inplace with benifits older more trusted players, also there is no real reason why in offical play anyone should change passport ID. Thus leagues should be very well protected. Why we do expect a certain level of abuse and multi account users for public play especialy, our system is designed with this in mind. Data analysis runs shows accounts that could be abusive and with admin inspection can lead to us finding people with lots of accounts or even two. Because having more than a single account is against our TOS, we will ban these accounts under it for Abuse of the TOS.

We have to opperate under the assumption everyone will do as the want. So what ever is released about hacks/cheats or our system, the same fact remains. Hack and Be banned, or stop now and enjoy the game. It's the biggest let off your going to get!